Mornings Greetings
by Shadow over Egypt
Summary: Bittersweet some things may be, and confusing may be others. Mornings are meant to be peaceful, and love simple. Where two spirits are concerned, neither is true. [YYxYB, oneshot]


**Shadow: **For a challenge on the LJ community: _Darkshipping - Yami Bakura x Yami Yugi's Journal. _The challenge was to write a one-shot composed either entirely of speech, or entirely _without _speech. I opted for the latter and…here you are.

_**Disclaimer: **_I own nothing but the words.

_**Warnings: **_Darkshipping (if you didn't guess by the community name), which means Bakura x Yami, which means boy x boy. If you don't like, don't read, 'kay? Some bad language.

* * *

**Mornings Greetings**

Mornings are such pretty, _delicate_ times. If one is lucky enough to be up at the right time, and not too busy rushing about to deal with such trivial matters as work and/or school, perfect peace may be observed, lazy sunbeams sliding through windows and turning dancing dust into golden rain. When the weather is warm and the skies are an endless blue mornings are beautiful, and normal mortals often simply smile upon waking and being greeted with such a perfect example of how to start a day.

Bakura, aka _Yami _no Bakura, Thief King, tomb-robber and almighty pain in the ass extraordinaire, was by no means in any way, shape or form '_normal'. _The fact his whole being 'mortal' was still questionable only added to his undisputed _ab_normality, and Bakura was very happy with things being just like that, thankyou very much.

…_Normality's overrated anyway…_

Anyway, having settled both the point he was neither 'normal' nor 'mortal', Bakura felt he was fully entitled to hate mornings. They occurred too damn early in the day in his opinion, at a time any _sane _individual would still be sleeping – if you had a hangover, what was the _point _in waking up and pretending you were fine? The pounding headache and bleariness caused by being conscious always insisted otherwise – 'to thine own self be true', and all that shit. The world overall would be a much better place if idiots didn't keep persisting in rising at ungodly hours and stomping around upsetting other souls who had the sense to sleep according to their internal clock, and not some ungracious boss or society-member.

And so – morning. One _specific _morning in particular, mid-summer, with the weather being perfectly glorious and Bakura being semi-awake as he glared first at the sunbeams sliding through the crack in the curtains in his hotel room, and then at the digital clock on the table beside the bed. It was friggin' _nine thirty. _

With a groan, Bakura twisted away from the accursed clock, burrowing into already crumpled sheets in an attempt to block out both the offending sunlight and the awareness he was awake before noon on a Saturday.

_Who calls for the conventional?_

He was doing pretty well, and was already a little more than half asleep when the phone rang. The blare cut through his peaceful doze like a knife, jolting Bakura rudely awake once more. Snarling, the albino leaned over to the _other _side of the bed, completely ignoring the half-hearted protests and sleepy grumbles beneath him when ended up squashing his bedmate in his efforts to reach the phone.

After snatching the receiver up he proceeded to thoroughly terrify the poor receptionist on the other end of the line, the ill-fated girl barely managing to get three words out before being silenced by a loud growl and a very long and detailed account of her imminent death if she did not hang up that _instant._

Needless to say, Bakura found himself listening to the dial tone not even two seconds later.

Muttering obscenities under his breath Bakura hung up the phone, twisting about so he could turn an irate glare on the sleepy dark eyes that were slowly opening beneath him (having lunged over to the other side of the bed to grab the telephone, he was still currently lying across his companion' stomach). His glare, slowly being interpreted by the sharp mind lurking behind those self-same eyes, clearly screamed '_this is _your_ fault'._

Yami Mouto groaned, grabbed the nearest pillow to him he wasn't lying on, and stuffed it in Bakura's face, burrowing his head under his own. _He _didn't like morning wake-up calls all that much either – even when _he _was the one who'd called to arrange them.

_A relationship isn't real without some imperfection…_

After getting a face-full of fluffy cotton Bakura yanked the pillow away from his head, his glare turning into an outright _glower of __**DOOM **_(version no. six, potency level three) at the lump of sheets that was his lover. Peaceful breathing was his only response – Yami seemed to have dropped off again already, and that _really _annoyed Bakura. So, being the true thief he was, he promptly stole all the blankets.

Yami _whined, _curling up into an even tighter ball to try and conserve some warmth. Being naked was perfectly fine as long as you either had a) a warm lover to snuggle up against (though neither Yami _nor _Bakura would call it snuggling – no, in their book it was 'practical heat conservation') or b) blankets. Being without both (as said lover had _stole_ all of said blankets) was _cold, _even with the sun trying its very best to warm him.

Bakura, despite himself, took the opportunity to admire his companion's exposed body – and then mentally smacked himself, reminding himself he was supposed to be annoyed with Yami. _Yes, _annoyed. Annoyance. He had to focus on the annoyance at being woken up before ten o' clock on a Saturday when all he wanted to do was _sleep _after a very…'busy' night and –

_Shit, _why did Yami have to open his eyes right then and _look_ at him like that? The former pharaoh was really too gorgeous for his own good at times, and the damn spiky-haired idiot _knew _it.

_Annoyance – _yes, Bakura had to focus more on the irritation of early mornings and less on how sleekly Yami could uncoil himself and lean across the bed to wrap his arms about Bakura's neck. Less on the soft scent of Yami's skin and hair, and the sleep-mussed expression sliding into a soft smirk against the albino's neck as both Yami and Bakura felt a certain something stirring below…

Bakura slipped off the hotel room's double-bed and out of his beguiling partner's arms in a hurry, cursing himself as he saw Yami's eyes glitter with amusement at the effect he had on the thief. Yami was used to Bakura's retreating – the former tomb-robber often got unnerved by his reactions around Yami. There had been a lot of tension between them over the years, and a lot more heartache and grief. This…_settlement _they'd reached between them in the past few months was by far one of the better ways they'd found to relieve the stress between them, and in a way, brought them both some form of peace. Sometimes…it still felt a little odd, a little awkward, to be kissing someone you'd proclaimed to loathe for over three millennia, to bed someone you'd once detested with all your soul.

_And this bitter-sweetness and war appears to be ours. _

Bakura fled to the shower.

Choosing to come back from the afterlife had been a big thing for Yami. Usually, if one got bored in the hereafter, they'd have to spend a while petitioning various minor deities to be reincarnated, and in a few hundred to a thousand years the soul would be reborn.

Yami, however, had been a pharaoh, powerful as hell – Master of the Shadows was no title to take lightly – and responsible for saving the world a few times. He was also pretty stunning in the looks department, and perfectly capable of _charming _the Court of some of the more major gods and goddesses, batting his pretty eyes at them until he'd got two-thirds of their approval. The other third he'd won using a mixture of smooth talking, pleading and guilt-tripping – Yami could be one _hell _of a manipulative bastard should he choose to be.

And so, after sufficiently moulding the Court of the gods to his whims, Yami had oh-so-casually walked out of the doors of the afterlife – at least a good few hundred years before he _ought _to have done according to the rules – and promptly stunned his hikari and aibou – Yugi – by turning up in the middle of a duel he'd been participating in against Kaiba.

Oh, and Kaiba had fallen over in sheer shock.

Bakura smiled tightly at the memory, grabbing a bottle of the hotel's complimentary shampoo and rubbing it into his scalp. He'd been one of the people in the crowd watching the duel – he'd been bored _witless _that day, and Ryou had dragged him along. Bakura hadn't had anything better to do, and so he'd willingly followed his hikari's lead. When he'd seen Yami…

Well, Yami hadn't been very happy to see him and, at the time, the feeling had been very much mutual. Trying to take over the world (again) was very much against everything Yami's – prior – existence stood for, and the fact Bakura had tried to do it quite a few times…

That Bakura was alive and kicking seemed an injustice to Yami, who would much rather have preferred the thief to be rotting somewhere in the corner of some hell dimension or blasted into oblivion somewhere. The pharaoh had even volunteered with the last option…but no. Ryou had stood up for Bakura, Yugi had – _slowly _and after much thinking – stood up for Bakura – hell, even the…brown-haired wench that kept bringing up smiley-faces and marker pens had stood up for him (god knows why) and Yami had had to back down.

Cue much smirking and smugness on Bakura's part.

Bakura washed the shampoo out of his hair, checking to see it was all gone before turning the shower off and stepping out. Today…they were off to another tournament, 'they' being all Yugi-tachi, and Bakura himself (he still refused to include himself in their little group, even though he was sleeping with one of its joint leaders and ended on turning up to nearly every one of their stupid gatherings as a result). It was an out of town tournament, thus explaining the need for a hotel to stay in overnight.

_I like my lover's edges sharp and he likes mine – why else would he stay?_

Bakura wasn't competing in the tournament but Yami _was_ - and it was for Yami he was rising at this ungodly hour after the bloody morning wake-up call; hell, Yami was the reason there was a wake-up call in the first place! He had to be going mad for doing these things…

When Bakura came out of the bathroom after getting dressed Yami was still where he'd been when the thief had went in, sprawled out on the bed. Breakfast seemed to have arrived while he was taking his shower and Yami had taken the opportunity to swipe the accompanying newspaper, absentmindedly munching on a corner of lightly-buttered toast while he poured over the puzzle section, the rest of the paper abandoned on the floor.

Bakura watched silently for a few minutes by the bathroom door, brown gaze wandering over his companion's - rather pleasing - form.

Yami was stretched out comfortably on his stomach on the bed, sheets tangled around his lower back and limbs (he'd reclaimed them as well, apparently). His chin was propped up with one hand, the other idly waving the last corner of toast about as eyes lost somewhere between the shade of crimson and purple scanned the pathetic excuse the newspaper passed for a 'challenge'. Dropping the towel he'd been using to dry his hair on the floor and moving over to sit on the bed beside the other Bakura could see Yami had already finished both the number puzzle and the sudoku, and had taken quite a sizeable chunk out of both crosswords as well. As Bakura leaned closer to glance at the as yet unstarted anagram Yami tilted his head to look at him, gold bangs twirling about his face twirling at the movement, one eyebrow raised. Bakura ignored the eyebrow, continuing to reach for the anagram.

Yami moved the paper out of his way.

Bakura shot his lover a pointed look, to which Yami only smiled sweetly and made a great show of deliberately turning around so his back faced towards the albino, popping the last bit of toast into his mouth at the same time and finishing it with a crunch. The action suddenly made Bakura want some toast of his own and he turned to the breakfast to fetch some, only to discover there was none left. He scowled, turning back to Yami and jabbing the other youth in the side, causing the spirit to jump, and then suddenly choke on the food he'd been swallowing.

_These little flaws, so numerous, litter us both, and still we're both standing._

Bakura smirked while Yami coughed, and the albino's expression didn't falter in the slightest when the pharaoh glared at him. Glowering Yami reached past Bakura and grabbed a glass of orange juice, downing the cool liquid to try and ease his scratched throat.

Bakura took the opportunity to steal the newspaper's puzzle section while Yami was busy.

Yami finished his orange juice, and fixed an unimpressed look upon his lover. When Bakura failed to respond adequately to 'the _look', _Yami took it into his head to try more physical means – aka, leaping at Bakura to try and snatch the paper back.

The albino put up a determined fight and the two wrestled amongst the bed covers, only…sometime during the proceedings the actual _point _of the whole thing seemed to have been lost and Yami and Bakura ended up kissing fiercely, the poor puzzle section abandoned to join the rest of the paper on the hotel room's floor.

_We keep on jabbing and prodding at one another and still others call it 'love' -_

Mornings are such pretty, _delicate_ times. If one is lucky enough to be up at the right time, and not too busy rushing about to deal with such trivial matters as work and/or school, perfect peace may be observed, lazy sunbeams sliding through windows and turning dancing dust into golden rain. When the weather is warm and the skies are an endless blue mornings are beautiful, and normal mortals often simply smile upon waking and being greeted with such a perfect example of how to start a day.

At least…that was true as long as you weren't Yami or Bakura. Their days usually started with a bang, with arguments and petty squabbles, and make-up activities on the floor, in the bed, in the shower. Normality wasn't their thing; mortality hadn't been made certain yet – and both of them were quite happy with things as they were. So what if they bickered? If they fought? Bakura didn't seem to want to kill Yami any longer (most of the time), which was a marked improvement from before. Yami blasted things to the Shadow Realm less, and there was a noticeable drop in people attending Domino Hospital for mental instabilities due to various penalty games.

_Really…if it's love or war now – it makes little difference._

The lines between love and hate for Yami and Bakura had been crossed awhile ago. There was no going back to before, and so both spirits consoled themselves with what was good about the present.

And…if the quite happy noises coming from the bed for the next half hour or so were to be believed, there was certainly plenty enough to be content about.


End file.
